Carried Away - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to Postal History Sunday, featured weekly on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you take this link, you can view every edition of Postal History Sunday, starting with this one (the most recent always shows up at the top). 

Everyone is welcome to join me each week when I share a hobby I enjoy with anyone who has interest.  It doesn't matter if you are an accomplished postal historian or just a curious bystander, we all have an opportunity to learn something new (even if that something new is "I don't think I'd like postal history!").  Put your troubles and worries under the bed in hopes that you vacuum them up when you do some cleaning.  Grab a beverage of your choice and put on your fluffy slippers and take a few moments away from the rest of your busy life - I'm sure it'll still be there once you're done with this post.

This week, we're going to look at the service provided by letter carriers to get the mail from the sender to the post office in the mid-1800s.

I'd like to start with this 1863 letter that was sent from New York City in the United States to Liverpool in England.  There are two postage stamps on this envelope.  The blue stamp on the left is denominated at 1 cent and the stamp on the right provided 24 cents in postage for this letter.  The required postage to send a letter from New York City to Liverpool in 1863 was 24 cents as long as the letter weighed no more than 1/2 ounce.  So, the presence of the 24-cent stamp is accounted for, but what is that one-cent stamp paying for?

A Service Taken For Granted

While I recognize that fewer and fewer people actually send letters via the postal service, many who read this blog have at least some memory of a time when paying bills and sending written correspondence via the mail was commonplace.  Unless you lived in a small, rural town, you probably have (or had) a postal person delivering mail to your office or place of residence.  If you wanted to send something in the mail, you could simply place it in your mailbox and that same person would pick up your letter and take it to the post office for you. 

from Smithsonian National Postal Museum

In fact, as a person who does not live in a town, I benefit from Rural Free Delivery in the United States.  In other words, I do not have to pay extra to have someone drive by our farm six days a week and drop our mail off in a box that looks a good deal like the one shown above.  And, just like someone who lives in a city with postal carriers, I can place mail into my mailbox and raise the red flag on the side to alert our rural carrier that I have placed a letter(s) into the box that I want them to take to the post office for me.

The rural service started in the late 1890s, though it was not adopted everywhere at one time.  Prior to that point, rural customers had to make a trip to the nearest post office (that could be lengthy) to pick up and drop off mail.

Well, believe it or not, there was also a time in the United States where even people living in our largest cities either had to go to the post office themselves to pick up or send a letter OR they had to pay someone to go to the post office for them.

A Penny to Carry Your Mail

You've probably figured it out by now.  That extra one-cent postage stamp was intended to pay for a postal carrier to take this letter to the post office in New York City.  The trick, of course, was catching the postal carrier so they could take the letter for you.  Unless the person mailing this letter was receiving a letter delivery from a postal carrier, their best choice was to find one of the 586 lamp-post drop boxes scattered throughout New York City in 1863.  

from Smithsonian

According to Appleton's United States Postal Guide for 1863, carriers visited these boxes six times a day to empty them and take the letters deposited there to the post office.  There were 137 postal carriers employed by the New York City post office if we use the numbers in the report of the Postmaster General for the fiscal year 1863/64.  Their job, in addition to picking up letters from these letterboxes, was to also make deliveries of the mail (also for a penny until the middle of 1863).

You might be surprised to learn that the first collection box officially sanctioned by the US Post Office was patented in 1858 by Albert Potts.  These were quite small and required frequent emptying.  This, of course, led to larger boxes, including those built under contract with the Post Office by John Murray in 1860.  If this topic interests you, you may enjoy reading the summary provided here by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

The motivations for the US Post Office to begin taking carrier pick up and delivery seriously is a fairly complex question.  You could point to Europe and the history of mail pick-up and delivery that was well established there.  But, that would only serve as the model for some of the ideas that were implemented in the United States.  We need to remember that the majority of the population in the US resided in rural areas.  And, we also need to recognize that the infrastructure in cities was much younger in the US.  So, there are reasons why the same model was immediately adopted.

In any event, the reasons for these changes are complex, so I will feature only parts of the story today.

An Outside Motivation - Protecting Turf

Just as private mail services pushed the US Post Office to provide cheaper postage (and get laws passed to remove the competition), the private services that offered to take mail to and from private homes and businesses encouraged change by providing competition.  One well known private service was called the Blood's Penny Post in Philadelphia.  

Shown above is a letter that was mailed in Philadelphia on September 4, 1861, to Washington, D.C.  A three-cent stamp paid for the domestic postage to get from Philly to D.C., but there is an additional adhesive on this cover that represented payment to Blood's for carrier service.

The Blood's carrier service started in 1845 as D.O. Blood & Co, becoming Blood's Despatch in 1848 and was finally known by the Penny Post in 1854.  At its height, it had hundreds of collection boxes throughout Philadelphia that were emptied as many as five times a day.  

If you'll look at the cover above, you'll find a round marking at the bottom left.  It is hard to read, so I can provide you with a similar marking that bears different dates and times.  If the marking on our cover were clearer, we might expect to be able to find out which time of day this letter had been collected by Blood's Penny Post - just as the example below from 1858 illustrates for us.

In September of 1861, the cost for carrier service by Blood's Penny Post to the US Post Office in Philadelphia was one penny.  Blood's started the service at a cost of three cents in 1845, dropping it to 2 cents and then 1 cent (in 1855) as business grew and competitors attempted to get into the fray.  If you are interested in seeing examples of postal history from Blood's and their competitors in Philadelphia you may view them in Vernon Morris' exhibit that can be found at this link.

It turns out that it helps to have the federal government on your side.  The US Post Office had the ability to declare any road or street a "post road."  Once a road or street had that designation it was no longer legal for a private entity to carry the mail via those routes.  In July of 1860, the Postmaster General announced that all streets in Philadelphia were now post roads.  As a result, Blood's was technically no longer able to carry mail in the city - but they opted to ignore that announcement and continued to provide their services.

However, after the Post Office sought an injunction to prevent Blood's from continuing in 1861, they finally shut their doors on January 10, 1862.  If you would like more details about Blood's Penny Post, I suggest you read this article in the Classics Society's Chronicle by Edward Harvey.  And, if that's still not enough for you, you can read this article that expands on certain details by Steven Roth (starts page 4). 

US Postal Carriers in Major Cities

It is interesting to note that a person can, if they wish, find examples of the US Post Office's penny carrier service in several of the major cities in the early 1860s.  In my own collection, I have examples for New York City, Boston, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Philadelphia (shown above).  In each case, a three cent stamp pays for a simple letter weighing no more than 1/2 ounce to travel from one point to another within the United States.  The one-cent stamp pays for the carrier service to the post office.

It is interesting to note that the US Post Office in Philadelphia was not too proud to take a few clues from the successful Blood's Penny Post.  The back of this letter shows a poorly struck postmark that would include the date and time stamp to show which carrier circuit picked the item up.

Rather than show you that marking, because it is hard to read, let me show you a similar marking that bears a different date in time so you can get a feel for what it looks like.

As postal use grew in the 1860s, the number of cities that provided carrier services increased.  And, on July 1, 1863, the one cent fee for carrier service was removed and Free City Delivery was established in the United States. At that time only 49 post offices employed at least one carrier and there were approximately 450 carriers in total.  By 1900, over 400 cities employed nearly 10,000 letter carriers.

Why are Postal Historians Attracted to "Carrier Covers"?

As a postal historian, I appreciate items that provide me with clues that tell me how the letter traveled through the mail. Once we get to the middle of 1863 and the 1 cent fee for carrier pickup to the post office was removed, we lose some of the indicators that might tell us how a letter got to the post office in the first place.  A letter that was picked up from a lamppost drop box will look exactly the same as one that was dropped by the customer at the main post office after July 1st of that year.

That's why items prior to that date, like the cover shown above, have a special attraction.  The mere existence of the 1 cent stamp on this cover tells us that a carrier picked up this item and took it to the post office.  Just a bit more of the story is evident here.  And, because I know it cost 1 cent for a carrier to pick this up, I know the item shown below was NOT taken to the Philadelphia post office by a US post carrier.

However, if this item were dated October 1, 1863 (instead of 1861), I would not necessarily be able to tell the difference.

But, that's not the whole story of what attracts people to items we call "carrier covers."  You've actually gotten a taste of it in this Postal History Sunday.  We have interesting stories involving private local carriers that provided a service that the US Post Office was either neglecting or not doing sufficiently well.  We see evidence of social change as mail was made more accessible to a wider audience.  We see the progress where a convenience that initially required payment eventually becomes an expected free service.

It's a good story.  And you all know how I like a good story.

Bonus Material

The letter that features the Blood's Penny Post stamp is written to a Private James C. Hufty of Colonel Baker's "First California" Regiment, Company C.  Hufty, a 21 year old, enrolled on April 18, 1861 with the First California.  Apparently, Hufty found some way to hold on to the letters he received because there are several envelopes from this correspondence available to collectors.  

Camp Oregon (where this letter was addressed to) was part of the defense around Washington, D.C. (to its northwest) and many of these camps included the families of some of the soldiers.  This could, I suppose, help explain how these envelopes survived.  Is it possible he had someone at camp who kept track of these letters for him?  Below is a photo of the 31st Pennsylvania Volunteers encamped at that time near Washington, D.C. (a different unit that did not include Hufty).

Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-01663

Private Hufty would be among 553 Federal prisoners taken at the Battle of Ball's Bluff on October 21, 1861.  I have not been able to track Hufty beyond that point in time.

Senator Edward D Baker, of Oregon, formed this regiment largely with volunteers from Philadelphia and New York City, despite what the name might imply.  Baker was a politician and a friend of President Lincoln.  Because he recruited this regiment (and he had connections), Baker was given the commission as Colonel, despite his lack of military training.  This was a fairly common occurrence early in the war, which led to numerous mistakes in early action.

from WikiMedia Commons

The Battle of Ball's Bluff was a prime illustration how the lack of military background cost dearly.  Baker positioned his troops on low ground, putting them at great disadvantage.  They were pressed back to the Potomac where many were killed, captured or drowned in the attempt to retreat.  Baker paid with his life and his incompetence resulted in the creation of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.  The Joint Committee was created to begin addressing the competence of military leadership and to counter politically motivated appointments.

Baker shot at Ball's Bluff - from Library of Congress

After the Senator's (Colonel's) death, the 1st California was renamed the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry, though it was (and is) still often referenced by its original name.  The 71st participated in many major battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.  They were mustered out in August of 1864.

If you are interested in more details surrounding the 71st Pennsylvania, the History of Edward Baker's California Regiment, 71st PA Inf. by Gary G. Lash could be of interest to you. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's Postal History Sunday.  Have a good remainder of your day and an excellent week to come.  See you next week!